


No More Suffocating the Truth

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Prompts [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Friends, F/M, First Kiss, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Panic Attacks, Tragedy, Truth, kiss prompt, octavia is hurt, she lives tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 15:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14673723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: Kiss prompt #17: "...to distract"Tragedy has this weird way of making people stop suffocating the truth, and letting it out. So when tragedy comes, careening in with a narrow miss, towards Bellamy Blake, Clarke has a hard time letting the truth stay buried.





	No More Suffocating the Truth

Tragedy, and even a near miss, a brush with tragedy, has this habit of bringing out the truth in people, of bringing the things people like to keep hidden and buried out into the light. It makes people stop strangling their own emotions with broad hands, it makes them let those feelings finally breath, taking pressure off their own necks and letting the oxygen rush in. It also has a habit of happening at the worst possible time. Not that there is ever a good time for tragedy.

Thankfully this was a near miss, but it was close enough to make her want to throw up.

Clarke had been at home, on a Saturday morning, painting in her studio, when she got the call from some unknown number that Octavia had been in an accident. She flew out of the house so fast that she had to go back inside and get shoes, and she barely managed to keep herself below 30mph over the speed limit all the way to the hospital. She flew through the doors, and found Bellamy sitting in the waiting room, head in his hands, and a trashcan full of what she could only assume was vomit on the floor between his feet. A doctor was standing over him, speaking, but she knew he wasn’t hearing anything. She ran over, placing a hand on the top of his head, threading it into his hair, letting him know she was there, and turned to the doctor.

“He’s not hearing you, I’m sure you can tell.” The doctor nodded. “I’m Abby Griffin’s daughter, can you just tell me what happened, I’ll make sure he knows, make sure he understands once he can manage it.” The doctor looked ready to argue, but then Bellamy heaved into the trashcan again, and he closed his mouth and nodded.

“I’ll be right over there, just one minute okay.” He nodded his hands shaking so hard he couldn’t even hold his head up steady.

She led the doctor away, and he told her about the accident. Octavia had been in a car wreck, t-boned driver side by a delivery truck, and had massive injuries. She had been rushed into emergency surgery to repair the damage, they had already removed her spleen, but there was no telling what else they would find. The word “critical” was ringing in her ears. She nodded at him, shaking his hand, and told him that she would be around to get updates. He went back to the OR, and she beelined for Bellamy.

She got him to stand, bringing the trashcan with her, and led him to a bathroom, one of the single person rooms with a big heavy door that locked, after grabbing a small cup from the water cooler on the way. He slid down the wall, head between his knees, over the trashcan. She wet a few paper towels, and slid the vomit away from him, lowering on her knees between his legs, lifting his head with her hands to dab the cool paper across his forehead and the back of his neck. She had never seen him so broken, with so much terror behind his eyes. They sat like that for a while, almost 20 minutes, before he was even able to hold his own head up.

“I just…”

“shhhh… its okay. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.” Bellamy was her best friend, in the world. He had been around since she was a kid, when she and Octavia met in the after school program in elementary school, and he was just her annoying big brother who wouldn’t let them play with him, but somehow, with age, and time, he had become her person, and something so much more than a best friend. She loved him. She’d never told him that, but she did. Octavia had called her on it, about a year or so back, during their last semester of college together, and she hadn’t even bothered denying it. He had had a boyfriend then, and they had just broken up about a month ago, and he had been less wrecked about it than she expected, but it had still been hard on him. She never made a move, never said a thing, because having him like this, as her person, was better than nothing at all.

He had stopped crying, the occasional hiccup coming through, and asked her for mouthwash, which she left the bathroom to track down, asking the nurse at the station if there had been any news (there hadn’t). She brought him back a cup, and let him rinse his mouth out, and they left the bathroom, her arm around his waist, holding him up so he didn’t collapse right there. She asked for an empty room, somewhere they could wait, and the nurse, seeing the hollow look on his face, was quick to obliged, assuring him that she would let the doctor know where to find them when he looked up in a panic. He settled on the couch, laying on his side, curled up in the fetal position, and she sat on the floor in front of him, their fingers laced together on the cushion at her shoulder, for what felt like decades, but was maybe an hour. The doctor finally came in with barely news at all, still in surgery, still not sure what the full extent of the damage was, but it was looking more promising the longer she held on.

The next two updates were pretty much the same, some general news coming through the haze of nothing. Not paralysed, two broken clavicles and a few broken ribs but her lungs were fine, her heart was fine. The longer they waited, the faster Bellamy’s breathing became, until he was almost hyperventilating, and then he suddenly was, a full blown panic attack building its way up and rearing its ugly, angry, violent head. She made him sit up, head between his knees, still kneeling in front of him, holding his hands, rubbing his back, trying her best to get him to calm down. She tried to talk, but she knew he wasn’t hearing her, nothing she was doing was puncturing the haze of terror that was surrounding everything he did. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind, the one premed class she took was wracking around, talking about how to stop a panic attack, but she couldn’t find it, couldn’t draw it out, and his breath was getting more shallow, his eyes were starting to glaze, and she just… reacted. he lifted his head, trying to get more air into his lungs from the open space above him, instead of the crowded space between hands and legs and arms below, and she just… reacted, and kissed him.

She was pretty sure she had seen it in some tv show somewhere, someone stopping a panic attack with a kiss, but she wasn’t sure, because in that moment her whole brain was fuzzy. He tasted like peppermint, but somehow also sterile, from the mouthwash, but she just kept heavy pressure, taking his face between her hands and holding him steady. She held it for about 30 seconds, maybe 45, just steady, even pressure, a sterile kiss for a sterile place, for a sterile moment, but a kiss all the same, and she felt his breath, coming out of his nose onto her top lip, slow and become more even, less forced. She gently broke away, staying close, just in case the rush of air came back, but it didn’t. He kept his eyes closed, letting the even breathing take over, his hands on her wrists while her hands still cupped his face. She wanted to lie, to tell him it was to calm him down, to slow his breathing, but it was the lie being strangled in her throat this time, and the truth was slipping out.  
“Look, Bellamy.” He opened his eyes, still full of fear, but maybe a little less. “I love you, okay. And not just as a friend. I dont know how you feel about me, but I love you, and no matter what, no matter what happens here in this horrible place today, I’ve always got you. Forever. Its you and me, together. I’ve always got you. I’ve always got you.” She kept repeating it, over and over. “I love you, I’ve always got you.” looking him right in the eyes, her hands still on his face, his hands still on her wrists.

Octavia pulled through, with a few scars to show for it, and one less spleen, but tragedy wouldn’t let her shove the truth back down, wouldn’t let her suffocate it anymore. No matter what had happened on that terrible day, where tragedy hit, she had him. Always. She loved him. And now he knew. Whatever happened after that was just life, and whatever it threw at them, whatever he felt or told her in the coming hours, in the coming days, she had him, and they were going to do it, together.


End file.
